Soccer
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THE Riverina Anglican College are the team to beat in this year's Creed Shield, according to Mater Dei college Nathan Carroll.
Mater Dei were humbled 3-0 by their rivals in the first round of the competition on Wednesday, night before bouncing back to the winners list on Monday night.
Last year's competition winners had a 3-0 win over Kildare, with the coach pleased with the improved performance.
"They played a bit better than they did last week but there is still plenty of room for improvement," Carroll said.
"We played better against Kildare, worked on a few things and tried some news things."
Looking to use the width of the field and implementing a more compact game paid dividends for Mater Dei who also made some positional changes.
Changing the defensive structure by reverting to having four at the back, goalkeeper Liam Dedini moved from between the posts with Sam Kirk coming in and impressing.
Mater Dei are only missing a few faces from the team that stormed home to win last season, but Carroll has been impressed with the improvements made by TRAC.
"TRAC has improved a lot and last week they showed just how good they were," he said.
"I think they would be favourites.
"Last year when we won we didn't expect it, it was a bit of an upset and we came in this year thinking we'd be a bit stronger and get right up there again.
"But TRAC seems to have improved a bit more and we need to do some more improving ourselves."
Carroll is expecting the last pool game against Wagga High School to give a further indication of just where his team is at.
Meanwhile, TRAC scored a 1-0 win over Wagga High to move to the top of pool A.
Starting strong, TRAC were able to surprise Wagga High with an early goal.
With neither side willing to give any ground in the fiercely contested game Wagga High couldn't come up with an equaliser despite putting on the pressure in the second half.
Sam Jenkins was unlucky not put Wagga High on the board but the TRAC defence held solid for the win.
In the final game of the night Mount Austin High came away with a 8-0 win over Wagga Christian College.
After a scrappy first half when Mount Austin took a 1-0 lead in the break, they came out firing in the second half.
Jake Plounges did a lot of the damage scoring a hat-trick as Mount Austin piled on the goals in the second half.
The final pool games were played at Gissing Oval last night.